The Weeping Lore (Witte & Co. Investigations Book 1) (20 page)

Harry stood there in his shirtsleeves. In spite of the late hour, he looked awake and alert, and he motioned Irene in without a word. He helped her out of her coat, held a finger up to his lips for silence, and led her deeper into the apartment. As they passed the living room, Irene saw Freddy asleep in a chair, his cane across his lap. Harry pulled Irene into the study. The air was heavy with the scent of leather and aged paper, and the gas lamps burned low, shedding quiet yellow petals across the upholstered furniture.

“I need to see Cian,” Irene said.

Harry studied her for a moment. “Pearl’s with him for now. Let’s talk.”

“He’s dying.”

“He’ll last another ten minutes.”

“That’s a terrible thing to say.”

Harry shrugged.

“What, then?” Irene asked. “What’s so terribly important that it can’t wait?”

“What did she want?”

“What did who want?”

His smile wasn’t like anything Irene had seen before. Hard and devoid of anything approaching kindness. Harry’s voice was iron scraping leather.

“Irene, you’re a smart woman. Please don’t make me ask again.”

Irene perched on the arm of one upholstered chair, crossed her legs, and put one hand over her bare shoulder. Harry’s smile closed by inches, like a spring being wound tighter, until his face was tight enough to burst. Irene studied the bookshelves. Many of the titles were in French, a few were in Spanish. Some Latin and Hebrew and Greek. The top of the desk was clear, and the drawers had heavy locks on them. When she looked back at Harry, he wasn’t one bit less frightening. Irene’s hands were cold. Every inch of her was cold, and it had nothing to do with the weather outside.

“The box,” Irene finally said. “She wants me to find it. Nothing else. Now tell me. How did you know?”

“What’s in it?”

“I didn’t say a word to you, Harry Witte. How did you know?”

“What is in the damn box, Irene?” He leaned over her, his hands on the chair, his face inches from hers.

Irene reached up, pushed him back an inch. Cold sweat had started along her back. She forced a smile, patted Harry’s cheek, and said, “I think I’ll see Cian now.” Then she stood up. Harry stepped back, his hands flexing, and for a moment Irene was sure he was going to hit her. Then, with an ugly flush climbing his cheeks, Harry moved aside.

She made herself walk slowly out of the study. Harry followed her, and so Irene forced her legs to be steady, in spite of the shakes that were starting. She passed the living room and Freddy and let herself into the sitting room on the far side of the apartment. The gaslights gave only a dull sheen to the room. Pearl sat in one chair, an abandoned pile of knitting in her lap, staring into a corner. When Irene entered, Pearl glanced over, and a look of surprise crossed her face. She stood up, gripping the knitting needles as though they were daggers, and said, “What’s wrong?”

Irene shook her head, but Pearl didn’t move until Harry said, “Nothing.”

Clutching the ring in one hand, Irene knelt next to Cian. He lay on the couch, blankets tangled around bare legs. Wisps of dark red hair covered his chest and arms. Irene felt a blush start somewhere in the pit of her stomach and climb all the way to her hair. She thought about Patrick’s smile and felt guilty, and her face twice as hot as a coal, and she reached out and took one of Cian’s hands. A big hand. So much bigger than her own. The skin hot and rough. Cian murmured something in his sleep and tried to roll away. Blood stained the bandages along his side.

Irene slid the ring onto his finger.

She waited for something miraculous. A flash of light, a golden glow, a shiver across her skin. But nothing. Cian mumbled again, his hand closed tightly over hers for a heartbeat, and then he let go. Huge drops of sweat covered his face and chest.

The room pounded, as though it were the skin of a drum, and a headache had started behind Irene’s eyes. Pearl helped her up. Harry stood near the door, but Pearl gave him a shake of her head and led Irene past him. Irene’s legs had turned to wet noodles. Pearl all but carried her into a darkened bedroom and got her into bed. As the older woman drew the sheets over Irene, Irene felt another wave of the pounding dizziness, and the said, “Is he going to be alright?”

“Rest now,” Pearl said.

The other woman left without another word.

Beyond the curtained window, night waited, pressing itself against the glass with obscene eagerness. Irene shut her eyes, as she had as a child, but the dizziness refused to subside.

Sleep pulled her down with long, clawed hands, but before she slept, Irene felt her skin prickle, flushed with guilt, as she thought about Patrick’s smile and the feel of Cian’s hand closing over hers. A quick, hard squeeze.

And then sleep, and rising out of the darkness, round and pale as the moon, the face of Marie-Thérèse.

It was the shouting that woke Cian.

He rolled over, head pounding, and searched blindly for a bottle of something. Anything that would take the edge off his headache. His headache worsened, and he squeezed his eyes shut, but a sliver of light still reached him.

God, it was going to be an awful day.

Instead of finding a bottle, though, or the rough floorboards of the room he rented from the Doyles, Cian felt his fingers brush a carpet with a thick weave. Then other details started to filter through the pounding in his head. The shouting first. A man and a woman. Or maybe two men and two women. It was hard to tell. Then there was the fact that Cian was warm, almost too warm, instead of damn near freezing in the drafty room above the sausage-maker’s shop. His bed was more comfortable too.

Suspicious. Very suspicious.

He cracked an eye and immediately wished he hadn’t.

The light stabbed a long silver needle into his brain. Cian blinked, his eyes tearing up, and tried again. And then again. After a minute, he could open his eyes all the way, in spite of ungodly brightness. He was in a small, well kept room. His bed was not a bed at all, but a leather sofa, and he was wearing nothing but his white cotton undershorts. There were other things in the room—a table with a silver vase and silk flowers, a liquor cabinet, a collection of ivory figurines on a sideboard—but all of those things slipped right out of Cian’s mind.

He focused on the important details. He was, for all intents and purposes, naked in a strange place.

The shouting hadn’t stopped.

Thick bandages wrapped his side and chest, and other memories began to filter in. Escaping that apartment building with Irene, and then being attacked in the alley. Looking down into golden, reptilian eyes, and the flash of pain.

The hospital.

Captain Irving Harper.

After that, things became a blur again. A few things, though, were obvious. First, Cian was no longer in the hospital. Second, he had moved up in the world. And third, whoever was shouting was clearly not going to stop any time soon.

He stood up. It took two tries, and his legs were about as strong as a sick cat, but he was on his feet. He wrapped the blanket around himself, rubbed sleep from his eyes, and helped himself to a bit of Scotch from the liquor cabinet.

Good Scotch.

He helped himself once more. To get his strength up.

Then he went to the door and threw it open. He recognized the next room, with its sofa and chairs and paintings.

Harry Witte stood in front of the door, his back to Cian, his mouth open as he cut off in mid-shout. Beyond Harry stood Irene, in a dress that showed plenty of legs and shoulders and made Cian’s mouth drier than the Sahara. Pearl and Freddy stood a bit further back, watching the scene unfold.

Irene’s eyes widened when she saw Cian, and she gave a delighted squeal and pushed past Harry. “You’re awake,” she said.

“Softly,” Cian murmured, rocking back as she wrapped her arms around him and squeezed. “My head’s about to split.”

She laughed, released him, and stepped back. Then, for no reason Cian could understand, she started sobbing. Huge sobs that were either relief or total despair.

Judging by the fact that he was wrapped only in a blanket, Cian assumed it was despair.

Pearl and Freddy both came forward and guided Irene to one of the armchairs. While Freddy fixed a drink, Pearl fixed Cian with a look.

He’d seen that look on women before. That look meant Trouble with a capital T.

“Well,” Harry said. “You’re alive.”

“Yeah. I owe you my thanks, I suppose?”

Harry nodded. “For a part. But you really owe your life to Irene.”

“Oh.” Cian stood there for a minute, flustered and wishing the blanket weren’t quite so itchy. Then, “Thanks, Irene.”

She burst into fresh sobs.

“God above,” Harry said. He grabbed Cian by the shoulder. “Let’s get you some clothes.”

In one of the bedrooms at the back of the apartment, Harry left Cian with clean—and new—clothes. Cian let the blanket drop and picked up the trousers, then glanced over.

Harry stood in the doorway, staring at Cian. The other man stood there a moment too long, stared a moment too long, before excusing himself and shutting the door.

The skin on the back of Cian’s neck crawled. There were a million reasons not to like Harry Witte. He’d just learned another one.

When he’d dressed—good wool trousers, a shirt white enough to hurt his eyes, and even a heavy, gray wool coat, new socks and shoes, and all of it fitting like a glove—Cian returned to the front room. Irene’s eyes were red, but when she saw him, she laughed and said, “I’m sorry, you must think I’m completely mad.”

“I already thought that,” Cian said, but he smiled as he did. Irene laughed again. “I meant it,” Cian added. “Thank you.”

“You don’t even know what I did,” Irene said. “You might feel differently when you do.”

Pearl appeared then with a plate of potatoes and eggs, with a lonely strip of bacon in the middle, and she set it down before him. “Freddy ate all the bacon,” she apologized.

“I’m older,” Freddy said. “I need to keep my strength up.”

Cian set to work eating. As he ate, Harry and Irene filled him in on what he had missed. Parts of the story he didn’t like—being reminded of that wall of fog that had appeared outside the apartment, or Irene’s story about being trapped in another barrier of snow, or the bit about the ghost. At this point, though, he had to admit that he had seen too many strange things to call Harry Witte a liar outright. As Cian ate, his headache cleared, and he found his mind racing to keep up.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” he said, when Irene had finished. “Thank you for what you did. I’m grateful, truly. But you shouldn’t have made a deal. You don’t owe me anything.”

“You saved my life.”

He shook his head. “You don’t owe me anything.”

“It doesn’t matter at this point,” Harry said. He took a breath, and when he spoke again, his voice was more even. “It doesn’t matter. The deal is made. Now at least we have a chance to get it.”

“You think this is a good thing?” Cian said. “She was out there, alone, in the middle of the night, mixed up in God knows what, and all you can talk about is how it’s helped you out. What the hell is wrong with you? Now she’s got a spirit, or a ghost, or something after her, and it’s all because you got her into this mess.”

Harry surged out of his seat. “I got her into this mess? Listen here—”

“Stop it,” Irene shouted. “Stop it, now. No one got me into this. God above, you’re both the biggest fools I’ve ever met.” A flush mantled her pale shoulders and her throat and her cheeks, and Cian found it hard to remember that she was angry with him. Irene looked at Harry, who still hadn’t sat down, and added, “I make my own decisions. Both of you would do well to remember that.”

“I’m sorry,” Harry said after a moment. “Cian is right, to a point. We did bring you into this—”

“Did you not hear a word I just said?” Irene asked.

With a quiet smile, Pearl said, “He hardly hears anything these days. It’s like talking to a man with his head in the sand.”

Cian thought Harry might launch into another shouting match, but the red slowly drained from Harry’s face. With a sheepish smile and a shrug, Harry said, “Very well. I see I’m outmatched by the women of our little group.” He sat down. “Friends?” he asked, holding out one hand to Cian.

“You put her in danger. And you put me in danger. And I don’t trust anything about you. No, Harry. We’re not friends.”

Harry held his hand out a moment longer before dropping it. An uncomfortable silence descended on the group. Then the old Hun leaned forward, one hand plucking at his short, silvery beard, and said, “If you’re finished?”

Harry nodded but he didn’t take his eyes from Cian.

“According to Miss Lovell,” Freddy said, “the box contains an ancient relic. If it is what I believe, then it is most commonly known as the Mask of Dagon. Henry, you will know more about this than I do, but I have read enough about the mask to know that it is a relic of unbelievable power. According to a cuneiform tablet, the mask’s first known location was in the great temple of Dagon, in Ur, and it was worn twice a year by the high priests in rituals of communion. The mask vanished after Ur was conquered by the Chaldeans, but it appears again depicted in a silver urn recovered from the temple in Jerusalem.” Freddy paused. “The record grows even more scarce after that. Louis XIV claimed to possess the mask, but he also claimed to have destroyed it. There are hints—manuscript entries—that the mask was entrusted to an illegitimate child and eventually found its way through a shipping magnate to La Nouvelle-Orléans, which Americans call New Orleans. It disappears again, although half the founding families of New Orleans claim to have held the mask at some point.”